On 9/20/2019 1:19 PM, De'vID wrote:

It's explicitly stated in The Star Trek Encyclopedia, 3rd ed., p. 393, that this was the word for knee. Out-of-universe, the writers or director probably didn't like the way {qIv} sounded and added an extra syllable. In-universe, perhaps this is a dialectical word in Kor's dialect (he doesn't seem to quite speak what we know as standard Klingon), or perhaps there is some technical difference between {qIv} and *{qIvon}.

The encyclopedia explanation was doubtless invented after the fact to explain the word. I don't believe for a moment that the episode writer was thinking that.

If it's his knee, he'd have said knee. The universal translator may leave some Klingon words untranslated, but it can translate knee.

Martok didn't say "I do not want an artificial min!" He didn't say "I accept your lives into my ghopDu'."